Breaking the Silence: Critical discussion of a youth participatory action research project

This paper aims to inform practice for educational psychologists and other professionals who seek to facilitate youth participatory action research (YPAR) in schools. Youth participatory action research is founded on the assumption that young people are capable of being researchers who can co-create knowledge and act to change the world. It is a worldview as well as a research approach and can be initiated to co-produce knowledge, facilitate critical thinking, promote the evaluation of social systems and/or act against social oppression.

We (a) outline the origins of YPAR and review crucial methodological elements of YPAR found in the literature, (b) support practitioners to use a YPAR approach in UK schools using a real-world example to apply theory to practice and (c) critically discuss outcomes and challenges of facilitating YPAR. An ongoing YPAR project, Breaking the Silence (BtS), facilitated by social enterprise States of Mind and IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society will be outlined within the paper.

BtS demonstrates the power of YPAR to promote the voices of young people, and to allow them to democratically develop action plans that challenge existing education structures. Youth researchers have presented their findings at several conferences and through a national newspaper. They continue to work alongside trade unions and other organisations to push for educational reform. However, the project has demonstrated several challenges and risks of facilitating YPAR. For example, facilitators were not always aware when youth researchers felt they had less meaningful involvement. Facilitators also found it challenging to collaboratively analyse data.

The project indicates that YPAR has the potential to be a democratic, empowering approach that can be brought more widely into the field of education. However, careful considerations are needed by facilitators to mitigate the challenges of the process.